Week Fourteen - Dec 10-14, 2012

This week was...interesting.

It started out very rough.  There were a lot of issues at the beginning of the week with mis-communication, lack of communication, and so on and it caused a very rough start to the week. And my bad mood seemed to carry over several days, which was a bummer.

We spent the week playing games dealing with perimeter and area and volume, and we continued learning our Perimeter and Area rap.  The kids really love learning these songs with the hand motions.

The best part of the week though was Friday.  One of the ideas I got from the Ron Clark Academy was to have "theme" days throughout the year.  These happen randomly and they only last for a day.  The kids also do not know these days are coming!

So on Friday I decided to turn my classroom into the "Nez Hospital".  I literally transformed my room into a hospital.  I borrowed lab aprons from the Waller High School and went to Dollar Tree and bought face masks, hair nets, and gloves for every student.  I even dressed up like a doctor named "Dr. Nesbit".  I told the students that Mr. Nesloney was absent that day.  They totally played into every single part.

We did different lab activities to review things we had learned with measurement conversions and perimeter/area/volume.  They had to pull "worms" (gummy worms) out of "bear blood" (red dyed water) and measure the length of the "parasites".  I also had them measure the length of their arms, dissect the worm, and other different medical math problems.  I used my SMARTdocument camera to display a 3D beating heart on the board, and had my iPod plugged in the back of the room playing the sound of a beating heart.

I had zero discipline problems and the kids acted great.  They said they REALLY enjoyed the whole experience.  And I can't wait to do it again!